The SitePoint Forums have moved.

You can now find them here.
This forum is now closed to new posts, but you can browse existing content.
You can find out more information about the move and how to open a new account (if necessary) here.
If you get stuck you can get support by emailing forums@sitepoint.com

If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

now just make your asp/asp.net/php/perl serverside page and connect to it. Just echo the results and you can display it how you want. So you can update modify or what ever you want as you would normally do it with php etc

BUT, what I am interested is pure client side scripting to manipulate data.

For example, I write a ebook, and compiled ebook into exe format to protect my work, then I want to use Javascript to retrieve, insert, delete, update my database written in access, which is not compiled into the exe format. Since, I do not expect all my customers has / can install the server script, like php or asp (IIS, etc), SO I want the pure client side scripting, Javascript, to handle these data manipulations.

Ok:
1) as per usual - you can use Active X objects to create WSH and coms to handle all of this

2) what the hell are you on about? The client doesn't have to install the language that the server uses - or have to have anything to do with it, the server language simply renders an html page to be interpretted normally.

Your clients won't want to store the database on their machines - it doesn't allow for the notion that they might want to swap machines ... your better shot is to use your own database, on your server - and have them use username / password to access it in whatever method you're talking about.

Let say I wrote an ebook. My content of my ebook are store in Access database which is distributed separately from my compiled ebook (exe format).

So, when the user read chapter 1, the script will retrieve the chapter 1 contents from the Access database! They even can edit certain stuffs and store them in the said Access database, and subsequently send them bak to me using my asp/php script located at my server for example.

So, they can edit and store the background color of the ebook in the Access database. They can customise what they want with my ebook.

So what you want is that you they have a .mdb file that you will allow the user to modify in which the data will be sent to your mySQL (what ever) database. Just curious if im on the right lines, but why would you do it like this? maybe you can explain a little better

what i dont understand is what a database is needed in any circumstances for the clientside. Now what I would do is have visual basic run the ebook inside its own window. Have a configuration file called

learnasp.ini

use the ini file to update the configuration, remember to check whether the user updates to valid colors incase they change the file by in notepad. Other than that have options to do this in the program. I would have it so you have an invisible background with not window features and create your own custom handles ie close, minimise, maximise etc.

The only way i can think of connecting to the database as soon as they come online properly is to test on random intervals, however i could find out the best method tonight if you really want to do it this way.